Campbell Vaughn: Skills in agriculture among things shared on mission trip to Jamaica
My family and I got back a couple of weeks ago from a mission trip to Jamaica. Our church has been doing this trip for a number of years and I have a bunch of church friends who have been to this location with their families and come back giving nothing but positive reports. I have to admit I was apprehensive about going. It was mainly from selfish reasons because I asked myself, “Why are we spending a bunch of money to go be uncomfortable in a country that makes Augusta’s heat seem like Highlands, N.C.?” But we went. We were uncomfortable, but it was incredible.
The ministry we worked with is called ACE and its “mission” is to impact the lives of individuals especially with their basic needs, which encompass education, healthcare, enterprise and discipleship.
Our trip was to St. Mary Parish in north Jamaica, which is stunningly beautiful but with issues of poverty that are difficult to comprehend. Our group had two general tasks for our week in Jamaica: facilitate a vacation Bible school and help with “construction.” My wife, being a teacher, was slotted into the VBS and I immediately signed up to do construction (this was a very ambiguous term).
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ACE had recently purchased an 850-acre tract of property about 8-10 miles from their base camp hotel, which opened a bunch of doors for expanding the enterprise portions of their ministry. The property is essentially a farm with a few living quarters, a restaurant, a pavilion, workshops and a lot of farm land that needs a good bit of work. Being in the agriculture and natural resource side of the UGA Extension and having a huge piece of property with almost endless potential for farming, I was like a kid in a candy store.
ACE had been cleaning some of the pastures and begun a herd of 40 cows. They are grass feeding the cattle, which are a mix of Red Pole, Black Angus and Brahma (I think I got that correct). They are beautiful specimens that can handle the year-round heat of Jamaica. The idea is to have a sustainable cattle business on the farm that will be run completely by local Jamaicans. There were miles of barbed wire to put up and the fencing guru on the farm ran the straightest wire I have ever seen over super hilly country using crooked posts found on the farm.
The property also had 70 acres of overgrown coconut groves that ACE recently had under brushed. These coconut groves had not been used in 40 years and putting them back into use was an amazing feat and will really help revitalize their production. One of our jobs was burning off the brush piles from debris from the cleanout. Our group of guys loved that, but it added a lot of heat to the already hot experience. The farm is planting pasture grass to help keep some of the weeds in the groves to a minimum. They were having trouble keeping the local goats off the newly transplanted grass so the Perry boys in our group got to act as guard dogs to chase off any four-legged grass thieves we encountered.
ACE had made contracts with local families to supply the Jerk Shack restaurant on the property with chickens that had to be between 4 and 5 pounds each. We feasted on a lot of these chickens during our stay. The farm also had hogs and we used our scraps from breakfast and lunch for slop. The hogs made for delicious jerk pork we also had at the restaurant.
The farm had guava we collected to make jellies. There were pineapple fields, ackee, papaya, almonds, bananas and mango to name a few of the other types of fruit growing all over. There is even a chocolate factory on site called Cloud 9.
Getting a chance to help first hand has been so rewarding for my family, the group that went with us and all of the other groups that have been in the past. Each of us getting to use some of our skills (which are amazingly more universal that you would imagine) gave us a combination of humility and pride in being a part of making life a little bit better for people who are struggling.
It is so hard to even come close to describing the workings of this organization and how it is impacting the lives of the people in this little section of a small island in the middle of a sea. I could write a column every week for the next year that would barely make a dent in all of the things that are happening in this organization in St. Mary Parish Jamaica. I am looking forward to staying in touch with the guys from ACE and seeing if my Extension resources can help us find the best solution to keep goats out of a coconut grove. And hopefully help with a few more things as well.
Reach Campbell Vaughn, the UGA Agriculture and Natural Resource agent for Richmond County, by e-mailing augusta@uga.edu.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Campbell Vaughn: Skills in agriculture shared on Jamaica mission trip
